Antonio Di Pietro

Antonio Di Pietro, (born Oct. 2, 1950, Montenero di Bisaccia, Italy), Italian jurist and politician who uncovered a wide-ranging government corruption scandal that led to the prosecution of some of Italy’s top business executives and politicians during the late 20th century.

Di Pietro was raised in modest circumstances and served a brief stint in Germany as a migrant factory worker before turning to a career in law enforcement. He worked his way through night school as a police officer, earning a degree in jurisprudence. In the mid-1980s he became a magistrate, a position that combines the functions of detective and prosecutor.

In the late 1980s Di Pietro gained a reputation for high-tech crime busting; he used computers to compile and store vast amounts of data on individuals involved in scams. By scrutinizing both these early cases and computer dossiers, Di Pietro and his associates uncovered a systematic corruption scheme in which business executives routinely paid bribes to get government contracts. In early 1992 Di Pietro led the Milan sting operation that nabbed a Socialist Party leader as he accepted a payoff in exchange for a city contract. Several weeks later the accused politician began naming accomplices from far beyond the boundaries of Milan.

The scandal was vast and revealed that corruption had become routine and institutionalized in Italy. Virtually all the political parties participated in the graft, while major businesses collaborated to arrange the beneficiaries of given contracts. As the investigation gained momentum, business executives reportedly sought appointments with Di Pietro to reveal what they knew and to implicate Italy’s leading politicians, all in an effort to avoid arrest and imprisonment themselves. The most prominent of those fingered, former prime ministerBettino Craxi, resigned from Parliament and launched a counterattack. His claim that Di Pietro was part of a conspiracy to eradicate Italy’s Socialist Party generated little support. However, Craxi’s charge that the magistrate was acting like a medieval inquisitor gained resonance because Di Pietro had reportedly incarcerated untried executives and politicians with common criminals in Milan’s notoriously tough San Vittore prison.

Though Di Pietro’s methods appeared harsh to some, few sympathized with the alleged offenders, who reportedly had cost taxpayers some $20 billion in the course of a decade while securing inflated government contracts for themselves. In 1993 Di Pietro’s Mani Pulite (“Clean Hands”) anticorruption drive gave rise to graffiti testimonials (e.g., “Grazie, Di Pietro”) and accusations of bribery and the abuse of power throughout Italy. Owing to increased media scrutiny and threats to his life, Di Pietro began traveling with a police escort in a bulletproof car; he resigned the following year.

In the late 1990s Di Pietro began a political career, serving as the minister of public works (1996–97), a member of the Italian Senate (1997–2001), and a member of the European Parliament (from 1999). In 2000 he founded the Italia dei Valori (“Italy of Values”) party.